Seriously, I need a keeper. I should not be allowed near fire or machinery, and especially not machinery that uses fire. I should be tied into my chair with a soft belt while someone comes by from time to time to wipe my chin and check my diaper.
Two days before Christmas, or well over a month ago, I replaced the pressure regulator and one of the propane hoses to my oven. My oven stopped working. I misread a symptom and jumped to the – in hindsight wildly unjustified – conclusion that my oven had gone south.
I worked to find a replacement oven, only to find that I had been damned lucky to get the one I have in the first place. This design is long-since obsolete, and new ones cost several hundred dollars. Suitable replacements aren’t on ebay or craigslist or anywhere anybody I know knows anything about. The only alternative I could come up with is sticking a tiny RV stove in there.
The reasonable and obvious alternative, that I had misdiagnosed the whole thing and could fix it rather easily, didn’t come to me for weeks – and it must have come in a dream, because I woke up slapping my forehead a couple of mornings ago and muttering, “You idiot.”
First: I got the hose from Al the Propane Guy, whom I have mentioned in the past. Al is a known quantity: He’s the only game in town, knows it, and although he is capable of doing a competent job that’s not his default choice. If you get what you want from him it will be after the argument over whether he ought to: He can almost always come up with excuses, and he’s capable of amazing blunders. He didn’t want to make up that hose I bought from him. I forget his excuse but I had to argue with him. Then he went in the back and came out a few minutes later with a hose. Why did I assume he hadn’t found a way to screw it up?
Second: The new propane regulator D&L brought back for me from the big town about 50 miles away is not the same as those I’ve used in the past. It fit the hoses, but since installing it the pressure at the cooktop has clearly been lower than what I’m used to. Would that cause the oven’s safety valve not to work? Of course it would!
Yet I assumed the oven itself was to blame, and just stuck with that for weeks. Stupid.
So I rummaged around in the powershed and found the old pressure regulator. I replaced it because it stopped working well, but if I put it back on and the oven started working badly, that would settle at least one question.
First I pulled off the new hose and replaced it with the old one. That made no difference. Probably the new hose is fine. Then I replaced the new pressure regulator with the new one, and surprise! The oven lit. Not well, it wouldn’t come up to temperature, but still. The thermocouple and/or safety valve I thought were bad were not the problem.
I’m an idiot. I need a new pressure regulator.
Oh yeah… and just think what fun it is to be a person who is not capable of doing the mechanic things much herself and must rely on whomever they can get to fix things. And not just mechanical things, of course. I seem to be able to bend nails into useless configurations just by picking up a hammer… 🙂
Had a mechanic tell me ten years ago that one of the “idiot lights” on my dashboard meant that I needed extensive repairs and quoted me a figure guaranteed to curl your hair. And it was just an “estimate.” Told him no, and took it to someone else. They pretty much said the same thing… big repair, lots of bux. Thing is, I’m still driving that car ten years later and I never did have it “fixed.” Works fine… My current mechanic is a gem. He looked at the light, and the components connected, and said not to worry about it. It could still be a problem somewhere down the line, of course, but I’m not worried.
Sometimes you just have to go with your gut instinct, even if you don’t know a damned thing about it. 🙂 You are lucky, Joel. You do know about these things, more or less. Listen to your gus more, especially when the available “expert” doesn’t have a good track record.
Listen to your GUTS more. Danged dog bumped my elbow. LOL
ML: Gus the mechanic was a regular feature of Mechanix Illustrated magazine (or maybe Popular Mechanics, I forget which) years ago, so Joel would do well to listen to Gus, too. And a piece of tape blocks that idiot light nicely :-).
Joel: there are lotsa professionals who should be sitting next to you in their own drooling chair, so don’t feel TOO badly. And Og the caveman probably thought “Huh, fire not right, wood must be under-spec” and he left his cave in search of a different wood vendor. Then he got eaten by a predator. Your situation could be worse than at present. Not that it’s pleasant. Good luck.
My pressure regulator for my barbecue quit. I beat it with a wrench (what can I say I used to work on 50’s cars) and it worked a little. A new regulator costs $30. Kinda pissed me off because the barbecue is new this last summer. But I was in Harbor Frieght the other day and they had a regulator for $5.99 and it works fine.
Like certain news outlets I could mention, you are guilty of slanting the news. You made this into a “dumb Joel ” story, when really it’s a story about how Joel persevered and kept knocking his head against a problem until he finally found success.
Did I tell you the one about how I heroically survived and prevailed when Taliban shot the oven down while I was flying it to save a bus full of nuns and girl scouts?
Why would you save a bus full of Nuns and Girl Scouts? The check engine light has been on in my old Nissan truck for several weeks. I keep checking, the engine is still there.
Joel, your new regulator may be a dual propane/natural gas one like the old water heaters had. Of course new in the box it should have said so. Anyway, take the cap off and see if there is a slotted inner cap you can push down and give a half-turn to change from the 7 inches water column for natural gas to the 10″ needed for propane. Hope it works, Jeff
How about a lesson on baking bread. My oven works fine my baking needs work.
Larry, send me an email and I’ll let you have a copy of my bread recipe book. Developed those recipes over fifty years of baking my own. 🙂 mamaliberty at rtconnect dot net Just replace at and dot and take out the spaces.
Jeff wrote: “Anyway, take the cap off and see if there is a slotted inner cap you can push down and give a half-turn to change from the 7 inches water column for natural gas to the 10″ needed for propane.”
And you can make yourself a redneck gas pressure gauge with a few feet of clear tubing taped to an old yardstick. (You fill the tubing with water, measure the displacement) The hardest part is finding the appropriate pipe fittings to tap into the line.
Mama Liberty,
Next time you’re near an AutoZone or Oreilley’s, ask them to pull the codes on your vehicle, or buy a scanner for it. They can tell you what code is causing the light to come on, and armed with the knowledge, you can sift the truth from the B.S. I tend to agree with your current mechanic-leave it alone. It’s probably an “emission checkup” indicator to get you into the Stealership.
I’m not letting it bother me, really. Just amusing to think of sometimes. There isn’t any dealership I could take it to anyway… Saturn is no longer available anywhere, that I know of. And that’s really sad because it’s one of the best cars I ever owned. It has literally never needed anything but standard maintenance except the new wires after rats got to them in the desert. And that wasn’t the car’s fault, of course.
I did ask the mechanic here about the air bag fuse, asking him to pull it. But he was terrified of the liability and wouldn’t even advise me how to do it. Don’t blame him, but I want to figure it out. I have the owner’s manual, but so far have been too chicken to pull any of the fuses. It’s not clear which one is which… sigh
“ask the mechanic here about the air bag fuse, asking him to pull it. But he was terrified of the liability and wouldn’t even advise me how to do it.”
I guarantee you ML, somewhere on the Interweb there is a Saturn Forum (perhaps several). You will have no trouble getting your questions answered there.
I can certainly try, Ben. Have not had too much luck finding reliable information on such things in a forum environment, but it’s worth an attempt. Problem is, there is no way to verify the advice… in the end, I’d just have to make my best guess and pull…. hoping it doesn’t cause a failure cascade in the computer thingie. That’s what I’m really afraid of. Far as I know, there is no way to get that repaired here. The nearest Chevy dealership, if they’d even touch a 15 year old Saturn, is 90 miles away. sigh
Here is my fix for warning lights: A piece of electricians tape to block it out
ML: One point to make about airbags, they are a low yeild explosive and sometimes disconnecting things attached to them in the wrong way can make them go off. That is one reason why I wouldn’t advise you disabling it. I know it can be a pain and sometimes scary proposition to have that thing in your face while driving, but the alternative can be just as bad or worse.
Joel, had a similar issue here with my 15# tank, new regulator at China-mart put me out $6 but the stove has been working like a charm since. Now, as for flying your stove and saving nuns and girl scouts, Didn’t Ghost and LB tell you to NOT lick the funny looking cactus? If not, I am sayin’ it.
DO NOT LICK THE FUNNY LOOKING CACTUS JOEL, BAD, VERY BAD!
LOL
MMeant to add, on the low yeild explosive, about as powerful as a .45 blank, not exactly superdangerous, but it can cause injury if you are not in the upright seated position when it goes bang.
Indeed… when I’m driving, my chest is no more than 8 to 10 inches away from the airbag. Since I’ve only had one accident in the 54 years I’ve been driving, I’m not really worried about the thing being deployed in a crash. But I know that air bags, like all mechanical things, do deteriorate with age and after 15 years this thing may decide to cook off, with or without any encouragement. No, the chances are very, very small and I don’t spend a lot of energy worrying about it, but it makes me mad to think that is just so damned unnecessary for there to be any risk of it at all. And, of course, removing the fuse wouldn’t totally eliminate the danger anyway… the explosive charge would still be there, and the mechanism could still fail at some point. It’s maddening.
ML: I understand completely, that is one reason, the main reason really, that I won’t own a new(er) car/truck Mid 90’s is my cutoff and even then,I prefer the 70-80’s vehicles (and strangely enough, Fiats, go figure) Less compamiliacated foomajiggers to mess with and electronics are as early 1900’s as you can get without a time machine. (even the relay design for the signals are from the 1890’s!!) On another aside, GM, before they became government motors, were pretty ubiqutious and the parts for such are still quite reasonable, and available. A more modern 4.3l is just a 350 with 2 cylinders chopped off. Most of the parts for one fit the other. even pistons and rings!(cam and distributor being exception)
anywhoos, enough stealing the thread from Joel, and I am just rambling anyways, LOL